The largest stadium subsidy in American history transfers wealth from working Kansans to billionaire owners—and the state’s own track record predicted this disaster
On a Monday afternoon behind closed doors, Kansas’s Legislative Coordinating Council met for barely 30 minutes before voting unanimously to approve the largest stadium subsidy in American history: up to $2.775 billion in public money for a new Chiefs stadium and training facilities.
There was no public referendum. No legislative debate. No time for citizens to weigh in. Just a quiet approval of a deal that will cost Kansas taxpayers more than the state’s entire annual K-12 education budget—and then some.
The Hunt family, billionaire owners of the Chiefs worth $6.53 billion, will pay roughly 40 percent of the $3 billion stadium construction costs. In exchange, they’ll own 100 percent of the stadium, 100 percent of the profits, 100 percent of the revenue streams, and 100 percent of the naming rights, concessions, parking, and luxury suites.
Kansas will own zero percent of the stadium. Kansas will receive zero percent of the profits. Kansas will collect questionable tax revenue from an industry trained in avoiding taxes.
And in 30 years, when the stadium inevitably becomes “obsolete,” Kansas taxpayers will pay to tear it down—likely while still paying off the original construction bonds.
This isn’t economic development. It’s a heist with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The Deal: A Masterclass in Asymmetry
The numbers are staggering even by stadium subsidy standards. Kansas will fund $1.8 billion for the domed stadium in Wyandotte County through STAR bonds—Sales Tax and Revenue bonds—and the newly created “Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund.” An additional $300 million will go toward a practice facility and mixed-use development, bringing the total public commitment to a maximum of $2.775 billion. Sports betting and iLottery revenue, money that could have funded schools or healthcare, will be diverted to attract the team.
Kansas officials insist this involves “no new taxes,” which is technically true but deeply misleading. Every dollar of sales tax diverted to bond repayment is a dollar that won’t fund schools, repair roads, or support healthcare. As economists bluntly state, opportunity costs are real costs.
Then come the interest payments. At current municipal bond rates, Kansas taxpayers will be making payments for 30-plus years, pushing the true cost well beyond $3 billion.
The Hunt family’s contribution? They’ll pay roughly $1.3 billion and receive complete ownership of the stadium, all revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking and merchandise, naming rights worth tens of millions, luxury suite revenue—corporate boxes run $200,000 to $500,000 annually—tax breaks on the land and property, municipal bonds with below-market interest rates, and infrastructure improvements paid by the public for roads, utilities and transit.
It’s the sort of deal that would get you laughed out of any private sector negotiation. Imagine approaching a bank with this pitch: “I’d like you to pay for 60 percent of my house. I’ll pay for 40 percent. I’ll own 100 percent of it, collect all the rental income, and you get nothing. Also, can you improve the roads leading to my house?”
You’d be escorted out by security.
When Your Own Track Record Predicts Failure
Kansas doesn’t need to look to other states to understand how stadium subsidies actually perform. The state’s own STAR bonds program, now 25 years old, tells a cautionary tale that legislators chose to ignore Monday.
Consider Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas. The state issued $85.2 million in STAR bonds to build the park in 2013. Five years later, after the death of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab on the Verrückt water slide led to criminal investigations and the park’s permanent closure, Kansas taxpayers were left holding $74.8 million in unpaid debt. The bonds weren’t scheduled to be paid off until the 2030s. The park is gone. The debt remains.
Or Heartland Park in Topeka, which closed in 2023 with $2.1 million still owed on $10.4 million in STAR bonds issued in 2007. Multiple other projects demonstrate the same pattern. Prairiefire in Overland Park still owes $64.9 million of the original $65 million borrowed in 2012. The U.S. Soccer facility somehow owes $95.4 million on bonds that originally totaled just $65.2 million.
When Kansas evaluated STAR bonds projects for tourism impact in 2021, only three attractions met the state’s own benchmarks: Kansas Speedway, the now-closed Heartland Park, and the Salt Museum. The majority of STAR bonds projects failed to draw tourists from 100 miles away or generate significant out-of-state visitors.
Yet lawmakers just bet $2.775 billion that this time will be different.
What the Experts Say: “They Can’t Say No Fast Enough”
If this were a controversial economic question—like optimal tax rates or trade policy—you’d expect divided opinions among economists. But stadium subsidies? The academic consensus is as unified as it gets in economics.
In 2017, the University of Chicago’s Booth School polled top economists on stadium subsidies. These weren’t activists or ideologues—they were among the most respected economists in the world, including seven Nobel Prize winners. The question was straightforward: Are stadium subsidies worth the cost?
Eighty-three percent said no. Eleven percent were uncertain. Just four percent supported them.
Sports economists John Charles Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys—leading scholars who’ve spent decades studying this issue—declared in 2022 that there was no point in conducting further research on stadium subsidies. It would only be “confirming what is already known to researchers in the field.”
When academics say the debate is over, listen.
“The evidence is that sports subsidies cannot be justified on the grounds of local economic development, income growth, or job creation,” write Coates and Humphreys in their comprehensive review of the literature.
Michael Leeds, a sports economist at Temple University, studied Chicago’s five major sports franchises and found their combined impact on the city’s economy was “less than one percent.” His conclusion? “A baseball team has about the same impact on a community as a midsize department store.”
A comprehensive Tax Foundation analysis reviewing 50-plus years of stadium financing research found “little to no significant economic benefit for state or regional economies beyond short-term construction activity.” Academic surveys consistently show that 83 percent of economists believe public stadium subsidies cost taxpayers more than any economic benefits they generate.
Kansas Lieutenant Governor David Toland dismissed this research entirely, claiming “this one we’ve done an extensive economic impact study that shows this is a huge net positive for the state of Kansas.” Translation: We commissioned a study that told us what we wanted to hear, and we’re ignoring everything independent economists have learned over the past half-century.
The Substitution Effect: Moving Money Around Isn’t Creating It
The fundamental problem with stadium economics is simple: entertainment spending is finite.
When a Kansas City family drops $500 on Chiefs tickets, parking and concessions, that’s $500 they’re not spending at local restaurants, movie theaters, bowling alleys or shopping centers. The money doesn’t materialize from thin air—it’s redirected from other local businesses.
“The money fans spend on the team would end up being spent somewhere else in the local economy,” explains the economic research. A stadium doesn’t expand the economic pie; it just cuts it differently, with the biggest slice going to the team owner.
Even more damning: cities that invested heavily in stadiums experienced, on average, slower income growth than cities that didn’t, according to Federal Reserve research.
Economist Allen Sanderson summed it up perfectly: “If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.”
The National Hall of Shame
If Kansas lawmakers had bothered to examine stadium deals elsewhere in America, they would have found a decades-long record of fiscal disasters.
In Hamilton County, Ohio, taxpayers are still trapped in what economists call one of the worst stadium deals ever negotiated. The county financed Paul Brown Stadium for the Cincinnati Bengals with a “state-of-the-art” clause requiring taxpayers to fund any upgrade made to 14 other NFL stadiums. The result: debt service now consumes nearly 20 percent of Hamilton County’s entire annual budget. Every time another team installs luxury boxes or upgraded video boards, Cincinnati taxpayers get the bill.
Miami-Dade County borrowed to build a $500 million stadium for the Marlins, assured that the new facility would boost attendance and allow the team to pay top player salaries. Instead, attendance collapsed from 18,770 per game before the stadium to 14,355 after—still 29th among 30 major league teams. The owners later sold the team, bragging about $1 billion in profits while taxpayers remained on the hook for what will ultimately total $3 billion in debt service stretching to 2049.
St. Louis built the Edward Jones Dome with public funds to lure the Rams from Los Angeles in 1995. When the Rams decided the stadium wasn’t luxurious enough and demanded $700 million in renovations, the city couldn’t afford it. The Rams moved back to Los Angeles in 2016, leaving St. Louis with more than $100 million in lingering debt. The city still pays $6 million annually for a stadium that houses no team.
These aren’t exceptions. They’re the pattern. Since 2000, state and local governments have spent more than $43 billion on stadium subsidies with consistently poor returns for taxpayers.
The Tax Avoidance Playbook: How Owners Profit While Paying Nothing
Kansas officials claim they’ll recoup costs through increased tax revenue. But this assumes the Chiefs and the Hunt family will actually pay meaningful taxes. History and investigation suggest otherwise.
ProPublica’s exhaustive investigation into NFL finances revealed that “billionaire owners are consistently paying lower tax rates than their millionaire players—and often lower even than the rates paid by the workers who staff their stadiums.”
The mechanism? Owners use “amortization” of player contracts to generate massive paper losses, slashing their personal tax bills by millions while running highly profitable franchises. The Golden State Warriors, for example, showed “many millions in losses” on owner tax returns during years when leaked financials revealed the team netted $92 million in a single season.
It’s perfectly legal. And it’s exactly how the Hunts will minimize their tax burden while maximizing profits from their publicly financed stadium.
Then there’s the federal subsidy most people don’t know about: Since 2000, tax-exempt municipal bonds for stadiums have cost federal taxpayers $4.3 billion. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 tried to end this practice, but “inadvertently created a loophole allowing stadiums to be backed by tax-free public bonds.”
Kansas taxpayers will finance the Chiefs stadium with debt. That debt will be serviced by redirected tax revenue. The Hunts will use accounting tricks to minimize their tax burden. And the federal government will subsidize the whole scheme through tax-exempt bonds.
It’s a closed loop of public subsidy and private profit.
Who Really Pays: Poverty Wages in the House That Tax Dollars Built
While Kansas debates how many billions to hand billionaires, let’s talk about the people who actually work in these stadiums.
In Philadelphia, stadium workers earn less than $15 per hour, with many starting at minimum wage. They’re not considered full-time employees “even if they’re clocking in for more than 40 hours” because their contracts are separated by stadium. No full-time status means no benefits, no healthcare, no paid leave.
Super Bowl workers in New Orleans were paid as little as $12 per hour to set up the halftime show—less than the cost of one beer at the stadium. Beers at NFL stadiums now run $15 to $16.
In Detroit, nearly a third of arena workers lived below the poverty line as of 2024. Nearly three-quarters received no benefits. Just 12 percent had paid time off or sick leave.
Think about that for a moment. The people serving your $15 beer subsidized the stadium with their tax dollars. Now they’re earning poverty wages, without health insurance, serving overpriced concessions to fans who also subsidized the stadium.
The only person who didn’t subsidize anything? The billionaire owner pocketing the profits.
Your average Chiefs fan earns around $85,000 annually. Team owners average $600 million in annual income. The benefits of stadium subsidies are “concentrated in a few hands—namely and primarily the owners,” while costs “are spread across taxpayers,” according to Harvard’s Journalist’s Resource.
For someone working full-time at Kansas minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, a single $15 beer represents more than two hours of pre-tax earnings. Parking costs another $40. Tickets for a family of four can easily exceed $500 before concessions. Yet Kansas taxpayers—including that minimum-wage worker—just committed to financing 60 percent of the stadium where those prices will be charged. The worker pays twice: once through diverted tax revenues that could have supported education, healthcare or infrastructure, and again at the gate if they want to actually attend a game.
In some jurisdictions, annual estimates show “$15 million in taxpayer funds earmarked for public schools are used to subsidize” stadiums instead.
The Cruelest Part: Paying to Destroy What You’re Still Paying For
Here’s where the stadium subsidy scam reaches its full grotesque conclusion: when this stadium becomes “obsolete” in 25 to 30 years, Kansas taxpayers will pay to tear it down.
This isn’t speculation. It’s the established pattern.
When Seattle demolished the Kingdome in 2000, the city still owed $83 million on its construction. Taxpayers were literally paying for a building that no longer existed.
When Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010, government debt stood at $266 million. It won’t be paid off until 2025—15 years after the stadium was reduced to rubble.
Chicago’s story is perhaps most instructive for Kansas. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority still owes $589 million through 2032 on bonds for renovating Soldier Field—a renovation completed two decades ago. The Bears are now seeking a new stadium, meaning Chicago taxpayers will soon be paying for two stadiums: the one they’re still financing and the new one the team demands.
This is the 30-year cycle: Stadiums built in the 1990s are being replaced now, costing “much bigger price tags than the original cost to taxpayers, even when adjusting for inflation.”
Baltimore’s Camden Yards cost $110 million in 1992 ($246 million in 2024 dollars). The Maryland legislature just granted $600 million for renovations—more than twice the inflation-adjusted original cost. And the stadium is only 32 years old.
Kansas is about to enter this cycle. In 2055, when the Chiefs stadium needs replacing or major renovation, taxpayers will still be paying for its construction. They’ll also be asked to fund its demolition. And then they’ll be asked to fund the new one.
It’s a perpetual wealth transfer machine.
Kansas’s deal with the Chiefs runs for 30 years, with non-relocation penalties declining after year 15 and disappearing entirely by year 30. Translation: in 15 years, when the stadium starts showing its age, the Chiefs will have new leverage to demand more public money or threaten to relocate again. Kansas lawmakers just locked the state into a cycle of recurring corporate handouts.
A Record-Breaking Giveaway in a Field of Bad Deals
Kansas’s subsidy is “by far the highest public subsidy ever for a major U.S. sports venue,” according to Sportico’s analysis.
The previous record-holder? Tennessee, which gave the Titans $1.26 billion in combined state and county funds. Buffalo gave the Bills $850 million plus another $400 million for future maintenance. Washington is estimated to be providing $1.15 billion for the Commanders.
Between 1970 and 2020, state and local governments devoted $33 billion in public funds to construct stadiums and arenas. The median public contribution covered 73 percent of venue construction costs.
Of the NFL’s 30 stadiums, only three were completely privately funded: SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. The other 27 all extracted public subsidies.
It is possible to build stadiums without taxpayer money. The wealthiest owners in the world’s most profitable sports league simply prefer not to.
Political Extortion and Closed-Door Deals
How do teams secure these deals despite overwhelming public opposition and unified expert condemnation?
Threats and opacity.
When Minnesota was negotiating with the Vikings, owner Zygi Wilf warned Governor Mark Dayton there would be “serious consequences” in the form of a Vikings exodus to Los Angeles if the state didn’t pay up.
Polling shows 71 percent of Americans oppose using tax breaks to attract or keep a football team. Sixty-nine percent oppose using public funds for NFL stadiums. But “elected officials fear reprisal by voters if a team were to relocate,” according to the Tax Foundation’s analysis.
The solution? Keep it away from voters.
Kansas’s Legislative Coordinating Council “voted unanimously Monday in a closed door meeting” to approve the bonds. No public referendum. No direct vote. Just a quiet approval of the largest subsidy in stadium history. Local reporting reveals that lawmakers expressed private concerns about “appearing foolish to taxpayers” while proceeding anyway.
When Missouri voters actually had their say on stadium funding, Jackson County voters rejected a stadium tax extension with 58 percent voting no. Kansas swooped in, and now Missouri officials are left making desperate last-minute counteroffers for a team that’s already agreed to move.
This is the leverage sports franchises wield: the threat of relocation, the promise of prestige, the fear of being the politician who “lost the team.” The political logic is clear—stadium subsidies can’t survive democratic accountability. As the Tax Foundation notes, this reflects “the basic political motivation to prioritize re-election above other interests, even when those interests are aligned with good governance and sound tax policy.”
The Opportunity Cost: What $2.8 Billion Could Actually Buy
Kansas ranks 41st in per-pupil education spending. More than 150,000 Kansans lack health insurance. Rural infrastructure is crumbling. The state hasn’t met its statutory obligation to cover 92 percent of special education costs since 2011, currently paying only 66 percent and forcing schools to redirect money from other programs to cover the gap.
What could $2.775 billion do instead?
Fund universal pre-K for every Kansas child for 15 years. Expand Medicaid to cover 150,000 uninsured Kansans for 75 years at current state contribution levels. Complete infrastructure overhaul for rural Kansas. Provide full-ride scholarships for 36,000 Kansas students for four-year degrees. Make a meaningful down payment on Kansas’s pension crisis, which needs $450 million to pay down debt. Cover special education costs at the statutory 92 percent level for nearly a decade. Fund the requested $377 million in improvements for the state prison in Hutchinson—seven times over.
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are actual needs in Kansas, all of which rank below subsidizing a billionaire’s stadium on the state’s priority list.
Governor Kelly’s own budget proposals called for increasing special education funding by $74.9 million annually over five years. The Chiefs stadium subsidy could fund that for 37 years. The state budgeted $10 million for water infrastructure grants for small towns. The Chiefs subsidy represents 277 years of funding at that level. Kansas state employees need a five percent pay raise—total cost $68.9 million from the general fund. Childcare providers across the state need support—the governor proposed $15 million.
Every single one of these needs is more pressing than building a domed stadium for billionaires.
Sports economist J.C. Bradbury put it simply: “When you ask economists if we should fund sports stadiums, they can’t say no fast enough.”
The Game Is Rigged, and Kansas Just Lost
This was never about economic development. The evidence against stadium subsidies is overwhelming, longstanding and uncontested by serious economists.
This was about political fear and corporate leverage. It was about a billionaire family threatening to move a beloved team unless taxpayers built them a new palace. It was about elected officials prioritizing their own re-election over evidence, expertise and fiscal responsibility.
Kansas is about to spend $2.775 billion on infrastructure that generates no new regional wealth, primarily benefits a billionaire owner worth billions, creates poverty-wage jobs without benefits, costs more than it returns in tax revenue, will need to be demolished at public expense in 30 years, and could have funded universal pre-K for 15 years instead.
As Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota observed: “When states and counties compete by shifting public incentives back and forth across the state line, taxpayers lose.”
Every $15 beer sold in that stadium will be a reminder: taxpayers built the bar, taxpayers will eventually tear it down, but the Hunt family will pocket every dollar poured across it.
The Chiefs aren’t coming to Kansas for economic development. They’re coming for the most lucrative corporate welfare deal in American sports history.
And Kansas—behind closed doors, without a public vote, against overwhelming expert consensus, ignoring its own track record of failed subsidies—said yes.
This investigation is based on analyses from the Center for Economic Accountability, Tax Foundation, ProPublica, University of Chicago Booth School, Federal Reserve research, and reporting from KCUR, Sportico and The Week.